Rickelton was the only opener across two teams to hit a substantial score. ©Getty
Before Sunday, Travis Head had opened the batting in T20Is with seven players. His partner in Darwin's inaugural T20I, Mitchell Marsh, had done the same with four. They have both launched the innings with David Warner and Jake Fraser-McGurk. But, despite opening 30 times between them, Head and Marsh had never done so together.
Something similar was true of Aiden Markram and Ryan Rickelton. Markram had opened with three partners, and Rickelton with two. They had been entrusted with starting the innings 17 times, but only once together - against India at Kingsmead in November, when their stand lasted just four balls.
On Sunday, Head and Marsh were in each others' company for 10 deliveries. They were separated by Kagiso Rabada, whose full offering outside off stump induced Head's shovelled catch to short third. Markram and Rickelton said their goodbyes after just six balls when Markram drove Josh Hazlewood hard but uppishly and was caught at cover.
Rabada also removed Marsh, in the fourth over with Kwena Maphaka holding a steepling catch at backward square leg. Rickelton batted on into the last over of the match for his 70 off 55. But it took the usually aggressive lefthander 45 balls to reach 50.
"I struggled to get going," Rickelton admitted at his press conference. "I really tried to hit the ball and I just kept clothing it. It was disappointing. Maybe it looked better than what it felt like, but it wasn't enough. I didn't find my groove quickly enough to get the team over the line."
Rickelton wasn't alone. Despite Marrara Oval's willing pitch and speedy outfield, and Rickelton's half-century aside, it wasn't a memorable match for openers. Instead, No. 5 Tim David's 52-ball 83 - which powered stands of 40 off 16 with Cameron Green, 59 off 42 with Ben Dwarshuis, and 30 off 23 with Nathan Ellis - was the key performance.
South Africa dismissed Australia for the first time in the 26 T20Is the teams have contested, with Maphaka holding his nerve impeccably for his career-best haul of 4/20. Senuran Muthusamy also shone for his 1/24. And Rabada, particularly in his first two overs when he limited the damage to 13 runs. But Corbin Bosch and George Linde went for more than two a ball, and Lungi Ngidi was only 0.67 of a run away from joining that club.
Consequently, Australia wriggled off the hook they were firmly on in the eighth - when they had shambled to 75/6 - to total 178. That they ignored the deepening hole they were in while the wickets were falling was part of the plan, as Marsh told a television interviewer: "Across the board in T20 cricket you see that teams are just going, going, going."
Indeed. Like everything else about this still developing format, change can't come quickly enough.
Currently among opening pairs who have had at least 10 innings together in T20Is, only England's Jos Buttler and Phil Salt average more than 60. There are four pairs in the 50s: South Africa's Graeme Smith and Loots Bosman, India's Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, Afghanistan's Ibrahim Zadran and Rahmanullah Gurbaz, and New Zealand's Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson.
Smith and Bosman are long retired and Guptill called it quits in January. Buttler is 34 and Salt turns 29 on August 28; they are nearer the end of their careers than the beginning. But Gill is 25 and Jaiswal, Zadran and Gurbaz are 23. What might the stats for opening the batting in T20Is look like once they're done rewriting them?
That question can't yet be answered, of course. But we know what else happened on Sunday, when South Africa did their own cause no good by dropping four catches, two of which would have snuffed out David's blast.
"We could have bowled them out for 120 and that's a whole different game and a different conversation," Rickelton said. "But the exciting thing is that they came out guns blazing and we managed to create a lot of chances - we could pin such a formidable batting lineup down a little bit."
The visitors' reply, although pedestrian - they didn't hit a six until Rabada muscled Ellis' bouncer over the midwicket fence in the 17th - looked like it might get the job done. Then Hazlewood and Adam Zampa dismissed Tristan Stubbs, Linde, Bosch and Muthusamy for the addition of three runs in the space of 10 deliveries.
That all but decided the match, which the Aussies won by 17 runs to break their national record for consecutive victories in the format. They have now won nine on the bounce, and they have the chance to move into double figures when the teams return to the same venue on Tuesday - when we're likely to see the same four openers. Better luck then, fellas.
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